The resiliency exhibited by some theories or derived hypotheses, despite their periodically “conclusive” refutation, is examined by taking the generic hypothesis on the connection between ascetic Protestantism and the emergence of modern science as a case in point. Refutations proposed in the Becker critique of the specific instance of Pietism and science strengthen rather than weaken the grounds for deepened interest in exploring both the generic and specific hypotheses insofar as the critique exhibits the fallacy of the latest word. That fallacy rests on three common but untenable tacit assumptions: (1) that the latest word correctly formulates the essentials of the preceding word while being immune to the failures of observation and inference imputed to what went before, (2) that each succeeding work improves on its knowledge base, and (3) that theoretically derived hypotheses are to be abandoned as soon as they seem to be empirically falsified. An Appendix examines evidence on the sociohistorical particulars of the case.

Introduction

Since it appeared in the mid-1930s, the hypothesis connecting Puritanism with the rise of modern science (Merton 1935; [1936] 1968; {1938] 1970) ²

1. This paper was supported in part by a grant from the National Science Foundation (SES 79 27238). I am indebted to Annette Bernhardt, Karen Ginsberg, and, most especially, Alfred Nordmann for research aid and to Harriet Zuckerman, Robert C. Merton, Vanessa Merton, and Byron Shafer for thoughtful suggestions. Requests for reprints should be sent to Robert K. Merton, Fayerweather Hall, Columbia University, New York, New York 10027.

2. Begun in 1933, completed as a doctoral dissertation in 1935, partly published in the form of three selected articles between 1935 and 1937, this monograph was fully published in 1938, appearing in Osiris: Studies on the History and Philosophy of Science at the invitation of its founder-editor and my teacher, the do yen of historians of science, George Sarton. The citation in my text expressly includes the 1935 dissertation, “Sociological Aspects of Scientific Development in Seventeenth-Century England,” deposited in Harvard’s Widener Library, although the Becker critique pays no mind to this earliest version of what Kuhn (1977, p. 115-22) and other historians of science have come to describe as “the Merton thesis.” The reference to the 1935 document is intended as a reminder that this and the other formulations of a similar hypothesis in the mid-1930s (Stimson 1935;Jones [1936] 1961, 1939) were independently developed and, to this extent, were mutually confirming rather than any one of them being derived from the others.

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has been frequently assessed and elaborated. So far as I know, however, the article by George Becker (1984) is the first critique devoted to a derivative hypothesis briefly set forth in those same writings which proposes similar connections between Pietism and science. The Becker critique serves several useful purposes. To begin with, it provides occasion for reexamining the substantive sociohistorical questions which it raises. It might also lead a few dedicated readers to examine the sources listed above (rather than the one article singled out in the critique) to see for themselves how far that critique captures the basic argument and its theoretical grounding. Beyond that and perhaps more in point for the rapidly developing sociology of science, it provides an instance of the workings of the institutionalized norm of “organized skepticism”: social arrangements for the critical scrutiny of knowledge claims in science and learning that operate without depending on the skeptical bent of this or that individual (Merton {1942] 1973, pp. 277-78, 311, 339, 467-70; Storer 1966, pp. 77-79, 116—26; Zuckerman 1977, pp. 89-93, 125-27). In that regard, the critique affords an instructive example of the “fallacy of the latest word”: the tacit assumption that the latest word is the best word. Elucidation of that fallacy, which has a way of turning up with some frequency in the give-and-take of cognitive disagreements in the domain of science and scholarship, involves the puzzle presented by the Phoenix phenomenon in the history of systematic thought: the continuing resiliency of theories or theoretically derived hypotheses such as Durkheim’s on rates of suicide ([1897] 1951) or Max Weber’s on the role of ascetic Protestantism in the emergence of modern capitalism ({1904-5] 1930) even though they have been periodically subjected to much and allegedly conclusive demolition (“falsification”) . ³

These generic problems in the sociology of science provide contexts for examining the broad implications of the Becker critique. Instances of fundamental thematic relevance - such as the place of extrascientific bases in the legitimation of early modern science - will be considered in conjunction with the fallacy of the latest word and organized skepticism. However, Becker’s specific charges of faulty readings of the evidence by the mid-1930s author of the work under examination will be considered

3. The Phoenix phenomenon clamors for systematic attention from historians and sociologists of science concerned to clarify the significant role of controversy in the growth of scientific knowledge. However, limitations of space and empathy for a fellow editor forbid analysis of that phenomenon here and now. For contextual observations on the social and cognitive structure, dynamics, functions, dysfunctions, and sociology-of-knowledge significance of controversies in science see Merton ([1961] 1973), Nowotny (1975), Markle and Petersen (1981), and Scientific Controversies, edited by A. L. Caplan and H. T. Engelhardt, Jr. (1984), especially the essays by Ernan McMullin (“How Do Scientific Controversies End?”) and Everett Mendelsohn (“The Political Anatomy of Controversies in the Sciences”).

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separately. Since these criticisms largely involve conflicting interpretations of German Pietist history, dogma, and practice that have long been debated by specialists, many may find them of remote interest despite their substantive relevance. For that reason, the specifics in Becker’s bill of indictment and their rebuttals are sequestered in an Appendix of Sociohistorical Particulars. It should be said that the Appendix took some doing by way of reassembling the evidence in point. For, as may come as no surprise, the author had failed to keep the abundant notes prepared for a dissertation (and the subsequent article and monograph) written half a century ago. (Still this episode provides an object lesson for others: do not discard library, field, or laboratory notes prematurely; socially organized skepticism may operate imperfectly but it can work tenaciously.)

Anticipating the substance of the Appendix, I must report that Merton seems to me to have been wrong on some details of exegesis and Becker right, while on other and rather more frequent details it seems to be moot or quite the other way. But when it comes to the fundamental thematic components of the hypothesis that relates Pietism to the emerging institution of science, it appears to me that the critic is on the whole mistaken, not least as a result of having overlooked the basic theoretical contexts of the sociohistorical particulars.

Index

THEORETICAL CONTEXTS AND EMPIRICAL KNOWLEDGE CLAIMS

The generic hypothesis under discussion holds that at a time in Western society when science had not become elaborately institutionalized, it obtained substantial legitimacy as an unintended consequence of the religious ethic and praxis of ascetic Protestantism. In developing this hypothesis, Merton undertook to examine the linkages of 17th-century English Puritanism and science in some detail and went on to consider, as an empirical corollary, the possible linkages of the contemporary German Pietism and science. This extension can be described as brief if it is agreed that a total of three pages (Merton [1936] 1968, pp. 643-45) focused on Pietism constitutes brevity. It is primarily those three pages which have been subjected to the intensive Becker critique. The critique also considers briefly the four subsequent pages, which were given over to statistical data showing some proclivity for 19th-century Protestant youngsters (not Pietists, since statistical data on detailed sectarian affiliations were simply not to be had) to enter the science-and-technology oriented Realschulen.

The paucity of these crude 19th-century statistical data in contrast to the abundance of highly differentiated data on the religious, social, and economic status of students today has its own interesting theoretical im-

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plication. It suggests that the enduring scholarly interest in the proposed ascetic Protestantism-science linkage cannot reside simply in that rather limited, empirically identified correlation between religious affiliation and interest in science. Much more controlled empirical generalizations are now so easily come by that a crude statistical report of this kind would presumably be given short shrift. It surely would not engender a detailed critique half a century later. There must be more to the hypothesis than the mere correlation - as, indeed, there is when one considers the theoretical contexts of the inquiry instead of confining oneself to this or that bit of pertinent empirical evidence.

The abiding interest in some empirical generalizations and lack of sustained interest in others stem from the logical location of the particular generalization. A continuing interest is more apt to obtain when the particular sociohistorical finding is grounded in a broader theoretical framework which has proved to be substantively instructive and heuristically fruitful. This, I suggest, is the case with the hypothesized linkages among Puritanism, Pietism, and science. Yet, having cited Science, Technology and Society in Seventeenth Century England in its very first sentence, the Becker critique manages to maintain a perfect silence about parts of that monograph, readily accessible since 1938, which provide the theoretical contexts of those three pages devoted to Pietism. It also unaccountably ignores the author’s post-1936 indications of the successive levels of theoretical abstraction in the monograph that are set forth in books that Becker cites (Merton 1968, pp. 649-60; {1938] 1970, pp. vii-xxix) but does not fully utilize, as though amplifications beyond those three pages and the handful of pages on religious statistics which he does consider were somehow off limits. Owing to that neglect of theoretical context, the critique does not and, more important, as a matter of principle, cannot strike at the sociological jugular of the generic hypothesis linking religion and science. For a text removed from its context cannot be properly understood or paraphrased. ⁴As a result, the Becker critique can at the most correct a reading of this or that specific bit of evidence while managing, as we shall see in considering the fallacy of the latest word, to introduce questionable readings of other cited evidence and thus to produce an appreciated but basically modest revision of detail.

4. To reduce, not to obviate, such inadvertent misrepresentations, this paper will quote relevant passages at length, since it cannot be supposed that readers will themselves uniformly turn to the quoted sources. Indeed, the presumption of general trustworthiness, rather than total freedom from error, underlies the system of organized skepticism in science and scholarship. Members of the scholarly community therefore need not confront the impossible task of individually studying for themselves all the sources of collateral interest to them. That function is assigned to peer reviewers and adopted by others having a specialized interest in particular subjects and problem areas.

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Levels of Theoretical Abstraction in Sociohistorical Inquiry

Briefly summarized, three levels of substantive theoretical abstraction give the original study whatever sociological significance it may have:

1.Least abstract level: the socio-historical hypothesis

Ascetic Protestantism helped [nb.] motivate and canalize the activities of men ⁵in the direction of experimental science. This is the historical form of the hypothesis. [Merton 1968, p. 589]

A critically relevant context describes the logical status of such a sociohistorical idea in these terms:

It would have been fatuous for the author to maintain, as some swift-reading commentators upon the book would have him maintain, that, without Puritanism, there could have been no concentrated development of modern science in seventeenth-century England [or, mutatis mutandis, with regard to Pietism and science in Germany]. Such an imputation betrays a basic failure to understand the logic of analysis and interpretation in historical sociology. In such analysis, a particular concrete historical development cannot be properly taken as indispensable to other concurrent or subsequent developments. In the case in hand, it is certainly not the case that Puritanism [or Pietism] was indispensable in the sense that if it had not found historical expression at the time, modern science would not then have emerged. The historically concrete movement of Puritanism [or Pietism] is not being put forward as a prerequisite to the substantial thrust of English [or German] science in that time; other functionally equivalent ideological movements could have served to provide the emerging science with widely acknowledged claims to legitimacy. The interpretation in this study assumes the functional requirement of providing socially and culturally patterned support for a not yet institutionalized science; it does not presuppose that only Puritanism [or Pietism] could have served that function. [These preceding italics are added.] As it happened, Puritanism [and Pietism] provided major (not exclusive) support in that historical time and place. However, and this requires emphasis, neither does this functional conception convert Puritanism [or Pietism] into something epiphenomenal and inconsequential. It, rather than conceivable functional alternatives, happened to advance the institutionalization of science by providing a substantial basis for its legitimacy. [Italics added.] But the imputed drastic simplification that would make Puritanism [or Pietism] historically indispensable only affords a splendid specimen of the fallacy of misplaced abstraction (rather than concreteness). It would mistakenly have the author undertake an exercise in historical prophecy (to adopt the convenient term that Karl Popper uses to describe efforts at concrete historical forecasts and retrodictions), even though the much less assuming author himself had only tried his hand at an analytical interpretation in the historical sociology of science. [Merton (1938) 1970; preface, pp. xviii-xix]

5. The reference to “men” sans women in this quoted passage is no inadvertent sexist statement; there simply was no place provided for women during the 16th and 17th centuries in what was known first as “natural philosophy” and later as “natural science.”

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In the light of this emphatically formulated hypothesis that ascetic Protestantism, including Pietism, served to legitimate a nascent and slightly institutionalized science, it is passing strange to find Becker arguing at length, as though he were making a new, different, and opposed observation, that the Pietists had a

fundamental indifference, if not outright hostility, toward all knowledge, in whatever discipline, should it fail to display a perceptible religious connection. As Francke insisted, for example, “All sagacity, by whatever name, must have the honoring of God as its goal and purpose and it must employ all other means on behalf of this holy purpose” (in Heubaum 1893, p. 75). [Can this be the archetypal Pietist leader Francke speaking, or is it the “‘most representative Puritan in history,’ “Richard Baxter (as quoted from Flynn [1920], p. 138, by Merton [(1938) 1970], p. 60)?] In keeping with this dictum, virtually every aspect of Pietist education tended to be planned and legitimated by reference to religious objectives. [Becker 1984, p. 1075]… To be certain, the primacy assigned to the religious motive was not entirely negative in its consequences for scientific education. The study of the natural sciences was justifiable not only as a means of promoting religious conviction but also as a potential tool in the service of “good works” and collective well-being. Significantly, however, this same religious motive also tended to impose limits on the study of science and the quest for new scientific principles. The danger always existed that this study would become disassociated from religious concerns and that the fruits of such study would lead to scientific claims and knowledge incompatible with established theological precepts. [Becker 1984, p. 1076]

As for Pietist religious opposition to immediate “scientific claims and knowledge incompatible with established theological precepts,” this pattern, too, has been noted concerning the great Reformers: Luther, Melanchthon, and Calvin. As these “attitudes of the theologians dominate over the, in effect, subversive religious ethic - as did Calvin’s authority largely in Geneva until the first part of the eighteenth century - scientific development may be greatly impeded… The implications of these dogmas found expression only with the passage of time” (Merton [1938] 1970, pp. 100-101). In short - and this, of course, is one of the principal components of the generic sociohistorical hypothesis under review - despite such immediate opposition to seemingly dangerous thoughts in science, the long-run consequences of the “sanctification of science” as exhibiting the “true Nature of the Works of God” and as contributing “to the Comfort of Mankind” became thoroughly secularized as the religiously legitimated institution and practice of science developed. That such sanctification can ultimately lead to secularization is precisely the sociohistorical irony under examination.

2.Middle-range level: dynamic interdependence of the social institutions of religion and science

In its more general and analytical form, it [the hypothesis] holds that

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science, like all other social institutions, must be supported by values of the group if it is to develop. There is, consequently, not the least paradox in finding that even so rational an activity as scientific research is grounded on non-rational values. [Merton 1968, p. 589] ⁶

The theme of Puritanism-and-science seemed to exemplify the “idealistic” interpretation of history in which values and ideologies expressing those values are assigned a significant role in historical development. The [correlative] theme [in this study] of the economic-military-scientific interplay seemed to exemplify the “materialistic” interpretation of history in which the economic substructure determines the superstructure of which science is a part. And, as everyone knows, “idealistic” and “materialistic” interpretations are forever alien to one another, condemned to ceaseless contradiction and intellectual warfare. Still, what everyone should know from the history of thought is that what everyone knows often turns out not to be so at all. The model of interpretation advanced in this study does provide for the mutual support and independent contribution to the legitimatizing of science of both the value orientation supplied by Puritanism [and Pietism] and the pervasive belief in, perhaps more than the occasional fact of, scientific solutions to pressing economic, military and technological problems. [Merton (1938) 1970, preface, p. xix; italics added]

3. Most general and abstract level: the dynamic interdependence of social institutions

A principal sociological idea governing this empirical inquiry holds that the socially patterned interests, motivations and behavior established in one institutional sphere - say, that of religion or economy - are interdependent with the socially patterned interests, motivations and behavior obtaining in other institutional spheres - say, that of science. There are various kinds of such interdependence, but we need touch upon only one of these here. The same individuals have multiple social statuses and roles [status-sets and role-sets]: scientific and religious and economic and political. This fundamental linkage in social structure in itself makes for some interplay between otherwise distinct institutional spheres even when they are segregated into seemingly autonomous departments of life. Beyond that, the social, intellectual and value consequences of what is done in one institutional domain ramify into other institutions, eventually making for anticipatory and subsequent concern with the interconnections of institutions. Separate institutional spheres are only partially autonomous, not completely so. It is only after a typically prolonged development that social institutions, including the institution of science, acquire a significant degree of autonomy. [Merton (1938) 1970, preface, pp. ix-x]

6. As early as the mid-1930s, even a logical positivist such as Rudolf Carnap would be writing, soon after the Merton 1936 article which he surely did not know, that “psychology and the social sciences … must locate the irrational [better: nonrational] sources of both rational and illogical thought” (Carnap 1937, p. 118). This is akin to the “Copernican revolution” in the sociology of knowledge which consists in the basic “hypothesis that not only error, illusion, or unauthenticated belief but also the discovery of truth is socially (historically) conditioned. As long as attention was focused only on the social determinants of ideology, illusion, myth, and moral norms, the sociology of knowledge could not emerge” (Merton 1968, pp. 513-14).

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This condensed sketch of the successively abstract theoretical contexts of the sociohistorical hypothesis requires some theoretical and methodological explication. It has, I believe, implications that extend much beyond the study under review.

A Counterintuitive and Counterpositivistic Hypothesis

First, it is proposed that continuing interest in the specific sociohistorical hypothesis derives from its being identified as a case in point of the varied nature of dynamic interactions between the institutions of religion and science in differing sociohistorical contexts. It is this middle-range hypothesis which was at the bottom of that inquiry mounted half a century ago. The hypothesis had a distinct theoretical interest all its own back in the 1930s, since it ran counter to the received positivistic lore of the time which declared as virtually self-evident that the principal, if indeed not the unique, relation between science and religion was one of conflict and clash. At least to those reared on such books with their positivistic titles as John W. Draper’s History of the Conflict between Religion and Science (1875 and many more editions, with translations into 10 languages) and Andrew D. White’s History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom (1896), it seemed improbable, if not downright absurd, that a religious ethic and praxis could have contributed to the legitimation and advancement of science which, it appears, was steadily engaged in undermining the dogmatic foundations of theology and religion. Witness only the heretical fate of Giordano Bruno, burned alive after trial by the Catholic Inquisition, and Michael Servetus, denounced by Calvin and burned alive after trial by the magistrates of Geneva. In good positivistic style of a parochial sort, it was no great leap from such exemplary episodes to a belief in the logical and historical necessity for conflict between religion and science in all their aspects. ⁷

Index

The Role of Rationality in Emerging Modern Science: Pietism as a Strategic Polar Case

The 1930s study undertook the collateral inquiry into a possible Pietism-science connection to supplement the fairly detailed and extensive inquiry into the Puritanism-science connection. As expressions of ascetic Protestantism, the two had much in common. Indeed, the 17th- and 18th-

7. Since this theoretical context is not being newly identified, the paragraph continues to draw on the 1970 preface to the Merton (1938) monograph. The legendary aspects of the life and mind of the Hermetic magician and scientist Bruno are handled in magisterial style by Yates (1964); Mason (1953) deals with the relation of Servetus to Calvin in connection with the new astronomy and the discovery of the lesser circulation of the blood.

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century Cotton Mather, the celebrated Puritan minister who was himself deeply devoted to the new science, ⁸had noted the close resemblance of such Protestant movements, remarking that “ ‘ye American puritanism [is] ... much of a piece with ye Frederician pietism’ “ (retrieved from the archives by Kuno Francke [1896], p. 63, and quoted by Merton [(1936) 1968], p. 643).

More specifically and more in point for the sociohistorical hypothesis under review, Pietism shared all but one of the elements of the Puritan ethos which had been taken to contribute to the rise of modern English science. Briefly itemized, these elements of Puritanism were (1) a strong emphasis on everyday utilitarianism, (2) intramundane interests and actions (Weber’s “inner-worldly asceticism”), (3) the belief that scientific understanding of the world of nature serves to manifest the glory of God as “the great Author of Nature,” (4) the right and even the duty to challenge various forms of authority, (5) a strong streak of antitraditionalism, all these coupled with the exaltation of both (6) empiricism and (7) rationality. Albeit with differing degrees of intensity of adherence to some of these elements, the ethos of Pietism was significantly equivalent, except for the strong exception of an emphasis on rationality.

It is well known that Pietism, in its various forms, was given to “enthusiasm and irrationalism,” emphasizing “the emotional as opposed to the rational” (Pinson 1934, chap. 1 and p. 36). Thus, just as Quakerism and the later “enthusiastic” Methodism provided cases that bear on the relative significance of rationality for an emerging interest in science within the English tradition, so, too, it was assumed, would “enthusiastic” Pietism as a weaker counterpart in Germany. Max Weber had made analytical comparisons among the varieties of Anglo-American Puritanism and Pietism. For the immediate purposes of the 1930s study, most in point was his conclusion that “all in all, when we consider German Pietism from the point of view important for us, we must admit a vacillation and uncertainty in the religious basis of its asceticism which makes it definitely weaker than the iron consistency of Calvinism, and which is partly the result of Lutheran influence and partly of its emotional character” (Weber [1904-5] 1930, pp. 128-39, at p. 137; italics added).

In drawing on Weber’s observations on this emotional element in Pietism, the Becker critique apparently fails to recognize that it is precisely this difference from many Puritan sects which made Pietism a strategic

8. “One of the persistent popular fallacies is the belief that the American pulpit, dominated throughout the period by New England Puritanism, was antagonistic to science. It was, on the contrary, a powerful ally in many instances... Increase and Cotton Mather, the foremost American Puritans .... labored earnestly to use science as a bulwark for religion, and in the course of this self-appointed task served an important educational function” (Hornberger [1937], p. 13; for details, see Hornberger [1935] and the monumental volumes by Perry Miller, The New England Mind [(1939) 1954]).

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polar case for examining the relative importance of rationality for creating an interest in science and for conferring religiously based legitimacy on the emerging science. In this the critique cannot be greatly faulted. For though the Merton study of the 1930s cautiously qualified the similarities between Puritanism and Pietism by alluding to the variously mystical “enthusiasm” of the Pietist movements, it did so much too sparingly (owing perhaps to the unimposed constraints of that three-page discussion). This it did in the following excessively condensed, imperfectly expressed, formally unexplicated, and therefore rather enigmatic formulation of the logic underlying the selection of Pietism as a potentially strategic case for comparison with the more thoroughly examined case of English Puritanism: “Pietism, except for its greater ‘enthusiasm,’ might almost be termed the continental counterpart of Puritanism. Hence, if our hypothesis of the association between Puritanism and interest in science and technology is warranted, one would expect to find the same [sic] correlation among the Pietists. And such was markedly the case” (Merton [1936] 1968, p. 643; italics added).

With the wisdom of some 50 years of hindsight and selective accumulation of knowledge (and, more dubiously, with the alleged wisdom of age), I am inclined to fault Merton’s early study at this point, as Becker does not, in three related respects. First, the study could have emphasized the point that the element of rationality in a supportive religious ethos is evidently not a necessary condition for a derived interest in science and that the other elements in the Pietist ethos were robust enough to generate such interest.

Second, it now seems evident that the cases of Pietism and Puritanism could have been compared in detail, at least in qualitative fashion, to assess the relative importance of differing intensities of adherence to each of the elements and to consider how each of these, as well as clusters of them, may have contributed differentially to the legitimizing of newly emerging science.

Third, the study might have taken further advantage of the strategic polar cases to isolate the role of rationality in affecting the kinds of science that became of prime interest, instead of confining the inquiry to the question of an interest in the sciences generally. That line of inquiry (suggested to me by Robert C. Merton) would explore the possibility that Puritanism and Pietism might have generated interest in substantively differing fields of science and in significantly differing styles of scientific work. The streak of antirationalism in Pietism might have led to prime interest in the largely descriptive (rather than analytical) kinds of science advocated by Francke (cf. Merton [1936] 1968, p. 643, n. 62) and might have led to a focus on the tinkering technical interest of the practical inventor rather than on work deriving in some deductive style from sci-

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entific theory. In contrast, the kinds of science proving more congenial to the Puritan ethos with its inclusion of an emphasis on rationality might tend to be, to put it anachronistically, of a more nearly hypothetico-deductive sort, in which experiment and observation more fully connect with an often mathematically expressed sequence of deductive reasoning. However all this may in fact turn out, that study of the mid-1930s did not venture to consider this kind of query about such possible consequences of the presence or absence of rationality as an element in the religious ethos.

The Pietism-Science Connection as an Unintended Consequence

Along with being a strategic case for assessing the place of rationalism in emerging types of “new science” and serving further to instance the perspective that rejects the positivistic view of primarily or wholly conflicting relations between religion and science, the Pietism case held a third kind of theoretical interest. As was heavily emphasized in the monograph in which the pages on Pietism are embedded, the hypothesized relation between ascetic Protestantism and the emergence of modern science was largely an unintended consequence of the religious ethic and related patterns of action (religiously derived practice) instead of being only the result of direct and deliberate support of science by religious leaders (Merton [1938] 1970, pp. 79, 100-102, 136). This evidently held particular interest for the author since in the same year as the article “Puritanism, Pietism and Science” was published, he was also arguing that the unanticipated consequences of purposive social action (Merton 1936) constitute a principal pattern of social and cultural change.

As we shall see before we examine the differing readings of the specific historical evidence by Merton and by Becker in the Appendix, the critique fails to pay adequate attention to these (and the other) theoretical aspects of the original study which, to my mind, give it any but the most parochial descriptive interest. The result is that the otherwise well-mounted evidentiary critique reverts, rather more than is indicated, to some of the long-standing historical debates over the character of the varieties of Pietism and of its historical role. The neglect of theoretical contexts provides one component of the fallacy of the latest word in scholarly and scientific controversy.

Index

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